A Quirky Eclectic Christmas Music Playlist

Okay, let’s do this playlist thing… These artists and numbers appear, back-to-back, in the playlist:

1. Peter Robbins et al.: dialogue from A Charlie Brown Christmas
2. Anonymous 4: Hodie Christus Natus Est
3. Waverly Consort: Three Spanish Villancicos – Dadme Albcrecias
4. Perry Como: Home for the Holidays
5. Mannheim Steamroller: Joy to the World
6. George Winston: The Holly and the Ivy
7. Celtic Woman: O Holy Night
8. John Denver and the Muppets: The Twelve Days of Christmas
9. Al Hirt: Nutty Jingle Bells
10. The Roches: Deck the Halls

(Note: After some experimentation, I’ve found there doesn’t seem to be a simple way — like a single button to push — to fast-forward to the end of a number. What you do instead is drag the little progress-meter thing all the way to the right, to the end of the track; this cues up the next number in the list.)

Next: I can’t put a YouTube video into this audio-playlist thing, but Christmas music doesn’t get any better than this. Judy Garland, in Meet Me in St. Louis, introduces the world to “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” — and more or less ruins it for every succeeding performer:

(As Jordan Baker of the Dealing in Subterfuges blog recently reminded readers, the original version has none of this hang-a-shining-star/highest-bough stuff. What that verse actually — much more piercingly poignantly — says is:

Someday soon, we all will be together —
If the fates allow.
Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow…
So have yourself a Merry Little Christmas now.

Got that???)

Finally, the music of Christmas writing. Dylan Thomas reads his own A Child’s Christmas in Wales (in two parts, back-to-back — thanks, WordPress Audio Player plugin!):

(The complete text is here, if you’d like to follow along; link opens in a new window/tab, so you can move back and forth from the text to the audio stream.)

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Bonus: Video from 1979’s Christmas Together special, which shows John Denver and The Muppets singing the Twelve Days of Christmas (audio only is in the above playlist, obviously):

Don’t you wish you could see the chaos “backstage” as all the Muppeteers, their arms waving, squeezed in around John Denver?